Antivirus software can be used to prevent, detect, and remove malicious software on a computer. With the proliferation of various kinds of malware, antivirus software is limited in its ability to protect from more sophisticated attacks, such as phishing attacks, malicious URLs, and social engineering techniques. Antivirus software is also limited by its ability to recognize malicious software. Another major drawback to antivirus software is that inexperienced users can be made to feel a false sense of security when using the computer.
A unified threat management (UTM) or unified security management (USM) system can perform security functions within a system to prevent rogue user accounts or compromised user accounts from engaging in malicious activity. However similar to antivirus software, UTM or UTS systems can only limit the entrance of malicious software into the system rather than prevent malicious code from running entirely.